It is known, for example from French Pat. No. 903,040, to produce capacitors by stacking films of metalized plastics material in flat form or on a wheel of large diameter. After establishing lateral connections of these stacks of parallelepipedal form, they are cut into unitary capacitors by radial separation. These parallelepipedal bars formed in this manner may have a length greater than one meter and the problem arises as to the handling of them automatically for the purpose of separation, in particular in the case of those which have a natural or inherent curvature caused by winding on the wheel.
It is known that use may be made of belt or cloth conveyors for storage and transfer of devices of this nature. However, these known conveyors have the disadvantage that they do not match the shape of the stack, thereby causing deterioration deleterious to the capacitors. In particular, it is observed that movement in the flat stage of these capacitor bars obtained by winding onto a wheel of large diameter causes separation of the surface layers at the level of the lateral connections formed by application of molten metal. Moreover, these cloth conveyors require considerable space since the bars should be arranged one behind another so that they may be cut one after another upon leaving the conveyor.